It did. And not just be a little -- you're miles past the line. The fact that other people had it worse is sad, but it doesn't justify what happened to you. Neither does the fact that he didn't also fail to live up to his financial obligations. And neither does whatever "misbehavior" (if any) brought on the beatings.

Farxist Marxist:My father is 85, 30 years older than me. During the past 5 decades, he has talked about his father perhaps 3 times, the last when I was 17, and only to relate how he died of cancer.

My grandmother was 102 when she forgot to wake up one morning. For her entire life, she never told anyone her life story, except that her father ran a laundry service for steamships, including (briefly) the Titanic. She immigrated to Canada with Grandfather in 1919.

We believe that the abuse started back in the early 1900's, continued until his death in 1958, a couple of months before I was born. It certainly prompted my father to leave home at the age of 16 and never look back.

Even today, as my father's life draws to a close, he has reservations being close emotionally. I've made it a life mission to be more open and loving to my son, though I question how well I am doing.

Abuse sucks, and goes on for generations, even when the inheritors try to overcome it.

i did like what you said about your grandmother forgetting to wake up one morning. nice way to say it.

SpdrJay:Let me give anyone who needs it some sage advice on dealing with crazy/abusive relatives:

1) REMOVE THEM FROM YOUR LIFE COMPLETELY.

Don't call, don't follow them on Facebook, don't ask other people how they are doing. They are now gone and will stay that way. Forever.

And when the abusers do finally die, you'll hear about it probably years after the fact, and you won't care because they have been out of your life so long it simply doesn't matter.

What these people did isn't really closure, it's just spiteful revenge on someone who'll never know the difference.

I've done just that with my birth mother. I've had no contact with her in damn near 20everything years, still in hear things about her from family though. She hasn't changed a bit from what I hear. Being her oldest son, of the family asks me to give a eulogy, I will. They probably won't like it but it will be nothing but the truth.

TenJed_77:SpdrJay: Let me give anyone who needs it some sage advice on dealing with crazy/abusive relatives:

1) REMOVE THEM FROM YOUR LIFE COMPLETELY.

Don't call, don't follow them on Facebook, don't ask other people how they are doing. They are now gone and will stay that way. Forever.

And when the abusers do finally die, you'll hear about it probably years after the fact, and you won't care because they have been out of your life so long it simply doesn't matter.

What these people did isn't really closure, it's just spiteful revenge on someone who'll never know the difference.

I've done just that with my birth mother. I've had no contact with her in damn near 20everything years, still in hear things about her from family though. She hasn't changed a bit from what I hear. Being her oldest son, of the family asks me to give a eulogy, I will. They probably won't like it but it will be nothing but the truth.

mofa:When people find out that we've been estranged from our parents for almost 30 years, they occasionally make statements such as, "well, you always have to love and/or forgive your parents." No, not really.

Yep. The hardest part is dealing with all the people who want explanations as to why you aren't going to visit your parents at Xmas. And try to convince you you need to work things out with them ("But they're your parents!").

These days I just lie whenever I see it coming ("Yes, of course I'm going!").

Joce678:mofa: When people find out that we've been estranged from our parents for almost 30 years, they occasionally make statements such as, "well, you always have to love and/or forgive your parents." No, not really.

Yep. The hardest part is dealing with all the people who want explanations as to why you aren't going to visit your parents at Xmas. And try to convince you you need to work things out with them ("But they're your parents!").

These days I just lie whenever I see it coming ("Yes, of course I'm going!").

This (and this whole thread, really) reminds me of a quote I picked up many years ago: No one is truly free until they can turn down an invitation to dinner without giving an excuse.

I probably got it a bit wrong, I don't remember who said it, and I don't care enough to look it up - in this case content is more important than precision or attribution. Anyway, keeping that little concept in mind has made it immeasurably easier for me to deal with situations like you describe. If someone gets nosy and it's none of their business, I tell them it's none of their business. Likewise, your reasoning is nobody's business but your own and if you're talking to someone who isn't going to be there when you wake up in the morning what should you care what they think about your decisions? Tell them the truth, tell them nothing, or tell them to fark off - that freedom feels nice.

My boyfriend's father was an abusive prick to him when he was a child; he beat him with extension cords with the plug end striking his skin, to the point where are are scars all over his back, the backs of his arms and legs, his ass....it's horrific. I've met the piece of shiat a few times, and to say he's a piece of shiat is really an insult to feces. We go up to New York over the holidays to visit his family, and we avoid him like the plague, as much as we can.

When his father dies, rather than go to the funeral, we're going to have a nice dinner at home, crack open a bottle of bubbly, and toast to the end of his nightmares, and the beginning of the rest of his life full of decent nights' sleep. I want that more than anything. He'll wake up some nights screaming, shaking in a cold sweat, and there's not a farking thing I can do to help him. I hate feeling that way. He's been to doctors, been on medication (though he loathes taking medication of any kind, even Advil), and none of it has helped. I truly believe that diseased taint finally kicking the bucket is what needs to happen, if only to act as an exorcism of some kind. Adam (that's my boyfriend) is 42 years old...if he's got another 50 years in him let's say, I don't want to spend a total of 63 years (we've been together 13) listening to him crying at night. I would never leave him, but he deserves peace at some point.

/end CSS//thanks for reading///if you abuse your children, do the world a favor and farking kill yourself, you sorry excuse for humanity

Damn. Hope he finds peace. At least you're there for him, and that alone, is pretty impressive.

I agree.....I also wanted to say something about insulting feces but I just cant think of anything....I was even gonna upload a Bristols Stool Chart because thats comedy in and of itself.We should all strive to be like #4 ; smooth and easy on the anus

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, howinfinite in faculties, in form and moving how express andadmirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how likea god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals-and yet,to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me-nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, howinfinite in faculties, in form and moving how express andadmirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how likea god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals-and yet,to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me-nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.

Many years ago at All Souls Cemetery, in Chardon, Ohio, a limousine pulled up to a grave and a man got out. He stood at the grave for several minutes then pulled out a gun and fired several shots into the grave. He then got back into the car and it sped off. This was witnessed by people visiting the cemetery, and maintenance workers there. Sheriff was called and they investigated, but never found out who it was or why they did it. They never identified which grave it was, either. It was on the evening news for a couple of nights and in all the papers.

Can I thank you for that story? It helps me to know that a damaged person can find someone who gets it, or even if they don't really get it, understands that there's something to get.

You may.

Coco LaFemme:I've been told by more than a few people over the course of our relationship that he's too damaged, that I deserve someone more put together, but those people can go to hell. I love him. It's as simple as that in my mind.

Poor guy ended up with someone who will share his painful experience in order to get praise for being so loving and bighearted. I feel sorry for him.

My dad was the abusive piece of shiat type that seems to be so common. I and my siblings all carry scars - physical, emotional, mental. To add to the fun, he was also an upstanding Christian, an elder at the Kingdom Hall and one of the friendliest and nicest people you could meet (when not behind closed doors). He is also very, very good at playing the repentant sinner on the rare occasions when somebody would start to figure out what he was really like.

Fast forward 30 years - we all escaped the JW's, all but one of us stopped speaking to dad several years ago, and we are just waiting for him to die. My brother and I have already made arrangements and paid for his burial and there will be no funeral service. Pack him in the box, put him in the ground.

We all have our issues - my sister had her tubes tied at 30 to make certain she would never have kids. I had a vasectomy at 26 and would have done so much sooner if I could have found a doctor willing to perform the procedure before I had a child. My brother is, in many ways, a carbon copy of my father. Fortunately, no children for him either. My other sister is trying her best to pretend our childhood never happened.

/CSB

I do know that I can't stand hearing someone say you should forgive your parents anything or that 'blood' is important and you shouldn't sever contact no matter what. Those people are clueless idiots.

Coco LaFemme:I've been told by more than a few people over the course of our relationship that he's too damaged, that I deserve someone more put together, but those people can go to hell. I love him. It's as simple as that in my mind.

Holy crap, those people are awful! You're wonderful for finding it in you to love him unconditionally. I have had some trouble, for which I was in therapy in a clinic for a while (though unsubstantial compared to some of the stories in this thread), and I was sure my girlfriend would leave me when I was going to tell her. She's now my wife and to tell somebody your deepest problems and find that it makes no difference at all for them is incredible.

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, howinfinite in faculties, in form and moving how express andadmirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how likea god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals-and yet,to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me-nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.

Don;t leave it to an artilcle. Always deliver your message of hate to the person who delivers it; in this case, tellign the psycho in advance what her obituary would read like would have been appropriate. I've cheerfully informed one of my in laws that their grave will be urine soaked whenever I can arrange it.

It's totally against our societal norms to speak ill of the dead. I've been to services where almost everyone hated the guy and no-one save for a few (who did not speak) treated the decedent kindly while they were alive. Yet everyone spoke glowingly of the person in the casket. Can't stand that sort of thing, so I left.

I've met Nate Phelps a few times and he is the nicest man imagineable. While he does speak of his experiences there and the mattock handle, I don't think that he ever spoke of that incident. I've also been to Topeka and yes, the Phelps clan (at WBC) is just as evil as you would think they are.

Here's what WBC did to a little girl who set up a lemonade stand across the street from their "church".

My dad was my scoutmaster, and bought me fireworks, and my mom sang me lullabies when I was a kid.We were the weird family on the street. Loved each other. Laughed. Didn't' fight. Had fun.I cannot imagine how parents can be such monsters, but I wholeheartedly approve of eugenics when I hear these tales.

My mother chickened out of my (illegal) abortion. My father beat her up for not going through with it. My relationships with them didn't really go uphill from there. However, I was luckier than my sister. At 51, I can still vividly see the image of my sister's back covered in welts. I tried gently putting moisturizer on it, then pressure, then butter (hell, I didn't know what I was doing, and I certainly wasn't going to ask them), and eventually found that ice cubes seemed to reduce the pain a little. It was 42 years ago, and believe me, my sister remembers it much more vividly than me; I'm the one they hated less. When people find out that we've been estranged from our parents for almost 30 years, they occasionally make statements such as, "well, you always have to love and/or forgive your parents." No, not really. The grim nostalgia that we share is that we are each others' only witness.

If you find this unbelievable, congratulations on your good fortune.

Sweetheart, I haven't seen my father since I ran out of the house barefoot two weeks after my sixteenth birthday. I am 48 years old. I believe you.

AverageAmericanGuy:Forbidden Doughnut: Matthew Keene: One day at work, I was talking about buying a case of Milwaukee's Best Ice, drinking it, at pissing on my sister's grave when she died. A coworker chimed in saying that 'when my mother dies, I'm going to flush her ashes down the toilet so she can swim around with all the other turds. But not at my house. I'm gonna do it someplace real special, like Taco Bell.'[s.pixogs.com image 149x150]

after reading that, i wonder if the USA has more dysfunctional families "per capita" than most other countries...

The cultural instillment of fealty is something completely absent in "American culture". While the concept of individual freedom and rights is front and center, the corollary concepts of responsibility and shame are not. So while there may not be a significant difference between rates of dysfunctional families in the US vs other places, Americans are more likely to complain about perceived slights than people from other countries (especially Asian).

agreed.

this is one of the few rational posts I've seen from this acct. guess he forgot to troll for once.

I won't comment on my own life, I have no contribution there.. However, it is a tribute to everyone here who shared your stories that YOU SURVIVED. You went on to realize that what happened was wrong. You are here in some way calling out those who did unspeakable things - and even though its in an anonymous forum it takes exceptional courage to even admit what happened.

My mother chickened out of my (illegal) abortion. My father beat her up for not going through with it. My relationships with them didn't really go uphill from there. However, I was luckier than my sister. At 51, I can still vividly see the image of my sister's back covered in welts. I tried gently putting moisturizer on it, then pressure, then butter (hell, I didn't know what I was doing, and I certainly wasn't going to ask them), and eventually found that ice cubes seemed to reduce the pain a little. It was 42 years ago, and believe me, my sister remembers it much more vividly than me; I'm the one they hated less. When people find out that we've been estranged from our parents for almost 30 years, they occasionally make statements such as, "well, you always have to love and/or forgive your parents." No, not really. The grim nostalgia that we share is that we are each others' only witness.

If you find this unbelievable, congratulations on your good fortune.

Sweetheart, I haven't seen my father since I ran out of the house barefoot two weeks after my sixteenth birthday. I am 48 years old. I believe you.

I believe you both, used to see my mother chain up my little bro like a dog, because he was 2 years old and barking like a dog. She can diaf for all I care, I wouldn't piss on her to put it out.

Mark Phelps feels nauseated whenever he remembers that night. He was hit over 60 times and his brother, Nate, over 200 with a mattock handle. Nate went into shock. Mark didn't. A boy who became a compulsive counter to handle the stress, Mark counted every stroke. His and Nate's. While their father screamed obscenities and his brother screamed in pain. Every 20 strokes, their mother wiped their faces off in the tub. Nate passed out anyway. That was Christmas Day.

/ just leaving that here

I had to stop reading. That made me physically ill.

Why is Fred Phelps still walking the street after that?

That's what I want to know.

Part of it is the mental illness of the other family members who witnessed the child abuse, but make excuses for it and defend the abuser while joining in on blaming the victim. Phelp's wife and other children saw all this, and participated to some extent, and then the children became lawyers to defend him. They continue to go along on his crazy abusive picketings of funerals, which could be interpreted as his own begging for the beatdown he so richly deserves.

Can anyone explain the mental illness of those family members who continue to lie for and protect the abuser? Are they just glad that it wasn't themselves that got the worst of the abuse? Are they eager to please the abuser so they don't become his next target for the worst of the abuse? Do they want to speak up, but they just don't dare to? Or do they really think that this kind of shiat is "normal" since it is all that they have ever known?

internut scholar:Mr. Ekshun: I've long said that I deserve every bad thing which will ever happen to me. I may not have aimed for the stars with the bad things I've done, but the little stuff adds up.

/If anyone even notices that I'm dead I've done it wrong.

Trying to get something off your chest?

Nope, I believe the same about everyone I've ever met as well. That time you were cruel to someone in the schoolyard; that time you kicked the dog; that time you yelled at a cashier because you were having a bad day... People go out of their way to do bad things much more frequently than they go out of their way to do good things (when's the last time you did something nice for someone you don't know?) and as far as I can tell I've never known anyone whose net effect on the world was positive. Not saying they aren't out there, they just don't seem to be around here.

At my fifth birthday party I ditched a neighborhood kid who considered me a friend. That obviously isn't anywhere near the equal of years of emotional abuse but it was a lousy thing to do and I can't just shrug it off by saying "well, I was just a kid" - I knew exactly what I was doing and I actively chose to make someone feel bad. Pointless little things like that make us who we are today, whichever end of it we were on. Because it's not possible to erase past misdeeds from time I'll always consider myself to be a bad person, whether or not I ever manage to have a net-positive effect on the world. It isn't a comfort to know that I'm not alone in my mediocrity-of-evil, either.

But if you've got any fan fiction, do tell. Be aware, though, that I don't actually own a hoodie or a handgun.

"They fark you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do.They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you.But they were farked up in their turn By fools in old-style hats and coats,Who half the time were soppy-stern And half at one another's throats.Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf.Get out as early as you can, And don't have any kids yourself."